halfcactus

Journal flip-through + trying to start a(n old-school) blog

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:00:09 GMT

Made a flip-through video because... well, because it would take more effort to post pictures. I'm now on my third month of Hobonichi Cousin and so far I've been keeping up, though I've really been struggling with incorporating work notes and to-do-lists with this format...

BGM is Magpie to the Morning by Neko Case because I don't know any new songs. XD

In other news, I've been trying to set up an old-school blog, just because I miss old-school blogs. I miss personal websites too and love seeing all the Neocities projects on my DW reading list, but I'm not at that level yet. ^^; Right now I'm trying out Bearblog, which is free, ad-free, private, and minimalist, but I'm too code-illiterate to customize my layout. It's very text-focused as a platform, but we'll see!

URL:
https://wrongseasons.bearblog.dev

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I have wanted clarity in light of my lack of light.

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:15:02 GMT

1.
Boosting some initiatives that my oomfs are involved in:

For the rest of the year, Niq (guoldu) is donating 100% of his commission funds to the Portland Immigration Rights Coalition. He does great danmei/baihe-adjacent art (and has incredible range), you can commission him here.

ICE OUT Fundraiser: Heated Rivalry fandom fundraiser

WangXian Against ICE: MDZS fundraiser (the donation period is over, though)

2.
Misc. Links

The Sameer Project (Palestinian-led fundraiser): they recently announced that there's been a huge drop in donations in January, causing mutual aid groups to scale back their operations. They're specifically asking for donations toward the food and water campaign.

Queer Without Borders | Panorama Film Festival: international short films, free to watch on Youtube!

Reports from Unknown Places: short daily fictional reports. Don't you miss blogs? Also on Instagram (where the reports come with pictures/paintings)

The Slowdown: a podcast where they feature one poem a day. (I personally just read the transcripts and treat it like a blog.)

Yonezawa Yoshihiro On “Yaoi”: Why Did Girls Give Up Ordinary Love for Boys’ Love? (1991) - a translated article that has been rotting in my to-read list.

3.
Journaling:
I have been keeping up with my daily planner but can't be bothered to cross-post pics here... In lieu of 3 weeks' worth of journal spreads, here are some food-y ones instead:

2 pics

Because it's a daily journal and I'm too lazy to print photos (since most of my pictures are of food and the neighborhood egret), I've accidentally gotten a little better at drawing basic shapes, which is... good? It's kind of like getting regular drawing practice but without the pressure of a dedicated sketchbook since the main goal is personal note-taking.

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Hobonichi Cousin A5 week 1 + preliminary thoughts

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 15:29:45 GMT

Thought it was time to """upgrade""" to—not just a Hobonichi, but a daily journal—since I had gotten more and more consistent in my paper planner/journal use over the years and was writing enough for weekly spreads to feel like not enough space. Of course, last year was my manhwa brainrot year, eventually cured by a persistent fever at the end of 2025, so I had a lot to say. But now all I do is exist in that kind of outlet-less anxiety that leads to hours of pacing in circles or staring into space, so... we'll see.

I also got a pocket diary as a gift last year and was trying to keep it as a separate work planner to make it easier to keep track of my notes, but my brain ABSOLUTELY could not stand the separation. I very unfortunately need everything in one chaotic notebook to function. Work-life balance?

Anyway the tl;dr of it is that after a week of trial and error and mental anguish I think I've decided to use the Cousin's weekly spreads for work and hourly notes, and daily pages for personal notes. Them being in separate sections may still end up driving me crazy but you'll never know until you try.

( hobonichi first impressions )

( warning: large images (journal photos i couldn't be bothered to resize) )

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2025 birds in review

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 12:34:11 GMT

All neighborhood birds—personal favorites are the pied fantail (so pretty and round! and has the cutest angry eyebrows!) and black-naped oriole (mostly for its call—it's such a head-turner, from its bright plumage and bold eyeliner to its melodious voice).

( 6 journal images )

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November journal

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 16:09:54 GMT

I only meant to post this casually on Bsky but since I already wrote all the descriptions it seemed a waste not to cross-post everywhere else. Also on tumblr with less yapping.

( journal photos + actual food photos )

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October journal

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 14:12:21 GMT

I started journaling about food so I can delete my 384903489 badly taken food photos from my camera roll.

Journal photos (mostly food notes lol)

1) I didn't have enough free space so I just wrote my Shortbox notes in my monthly spread lol.
2) Angst without emotion: the most worthless feeling of them all. is a blurb about a song, but it perfectly encapsulates how I feel about most manhwa with tragic protagonists, like what's the point of all this drama when the characters don't get to feel things!!!

Mid mooncakes for Mid-Autumn \o/ (They weren't bad, just not worth the price, all the fillings were too sweet and the yolks not to salty enough to offset them)

WIP haha:

i ruined the page (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀)

November 1, 2025 at 8:35 PM

Re: Hidden Love—my one important note is that the English translation I read (I think there are multiple) went a bit too far with the Anglicized/localized names. I can deal with Zola Sang (Sang Zhi) and Jesse Duan (Duan Zhi), but I draw the line at Yeecouver (Yihe, the name of a place)!

I recently discovered the podcast Secretly Incredibly Fascinating and listened to their ep about pumpkins.

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Photodump: June journal

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 01:39:50 GMT

Wanted to do a June/July journal photodump, but June was already so much: Justice in the Dark, poetry (Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta + Li-Young Lee), K-Pop Demon Hunters, Thursday Murder Club, Give Me a Hug Mr. Frog!

Pics!

(Featuring snippets of Li-Young Lee's poetry, I was reading his latest collection)

Tumblr links to JitD edits (with IDs in the alt text):

JitD x Mitski

JitD x Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

Created in China (cdrama) vocab:

I was trying to translate Mao Buyi's 借 (for another JitD edit):

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Reminder that there's one week left in Shortbox Comics Fair! Trying to write about my picks in this thread because it's good for the event but I'm such a slow reader and I hate writing. ;___; I should have saved Dead Horses by Freya JN for last because it's so good I lost the will to get anything else. 😂

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@thefridayfive 2025.10.10

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 12:05:10 GMT

https://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org/144268.html

Name five…

1. ... things you can't live without.
1) Phone 2) internet 3) A/C, 4) shower with heater and water pressure, 5) bug spray

2. ... of the best moments in your life.
Mm, I don't hold on to memories very well (which makes me worry about my mental health in the future) so I'll keep it to the last two years:

5 moments, with pictures

1) Decompressing with my friends in an AirBNB after a wedding. The weddings were great, of course, but I'm a textbook low-energy introvert so I remember the chill moments—or at least the feeling of relaxation—better lol.

2) Sleeping like a baby for the first time in ages in Star Hostel Taipei Main. I had been carrying so much anxiety so it was nice being in a comfy bed with cool A/C in a quiet neighborhood, and not having to worry about wasting electricity or water. I was very anxious about water supply in 2024, among other things, and my insomnia was pretty bad.

3) The morning after an overnight birthday celebration (a joint one in the sense that my brother planned everything and we just split the costs), I spotted a lot of cats (that turned out to be a family!) and had a very good homey breakfast that I still remember the taste of (not pictured: the ensaymada we had instead of cake).

4) Watching Six the Musical! It was a matinee show so I wasn't worried about getting home. I was by myself and therefore free of any considerations of other people and also free of any self-consciousness. AND the show was super fun. (I have zero energy for fun so this was a novel feeling for me.)

5) The time I followed the sound of a strange bird call to find a pied fantail perched on the terrace. When I approached, it turned around and yelled at me. It was so pretty!!! And looked so angy!!! Now every time I see a pied fantail in the sky and see the white markings of its beautiful tail I feel such a pang of admiration and a longing to see one visit again.

3. ... celebrities you can't stand.
All celebrities who became (past and present) senators. In ascending order of how much I can't stand them: Tito Sotto, the Tulfo brothers, Bong Revilla, and Robin Padilla.

4. ... books you enjoy(ed) reading.
Off the top of my head, including comics: 1) the Radch trilogy, 2) Witch Hat Atelier, 3) Semantic Error, 4) Run with the Wind, 5) Goodbye My Princess

5. ... items in your purse/backpack/on your desk.
BACKPACK: Laconic planner, pencil case, retractable correction tape, glue stick, foldable umbrella
DESK: water bottle, computer, cat-shaped coaster, washi tape that I'm too lazy to put away, pens I don't use but can't throw away because there's still ink in them.

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Random stuff:

exercise, journaling, and this year's mooncakes

I did end up finishing Yoga with Kassandra's 30-day challenge in September. I had to make up two skipped days in the first week of October, but now I'm freeeeeee. I also got a couple of Discord friends into it, which I wasn't expecting lol.

We're on the last quarter of the year and I've managed to keep my planner filled up, which I guess is also why I've been very bad at taking photos of it, even though I keep meaning to for documentation purposes. I got a Hobonichi for next year because it felt like time for a change and I figured I should try the daily format at least once in my life? I'm just so worried I'll hate it, especially since writing has been suuuch a chore for me lately. Just updating Dreamwidth/Letterboxd takes 200% of my energy and gives me zero satisfaction. (I do it because my memory and ability to put thoughts into words are worryingly precarious, and posting entries is my band-aid solution for that.)

Didn't celebrate Midautumn in any way this year (which is not unusual, though I usually like to take the opportunity to eat something nice), but I did get mooncakes that were advertised as ~artisan~. Tried a snowskin one for the first time (champagne chocolate filling) and decided that it's not for me, for reasons of "If I wanted a decadent chocolate dessert, I could just get myself cake". The traditional ones I got were white lotus, red bean, black sesame, and houjicha.

The white lotus was nice and very traditional, and the yolks were thankfully not chalky but curiously not salty, I guess because they make their own? The less-salty yolks worked well enough for the white lotus which had a more delicate profile anyway, but for the other flavors which were much sweeter I could have used the regular level of saltiness. The other flavors also tasted same-y, except that the houjicha had a grassy aftertaste. Which was a bummer because I really wanted a good black sesame flavor. ;__; AND I probably could have found red bean elsewhere at a cheaper price point.

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August / September music

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 12:46:25 GMT

I've been thinking about how I've missed seeing music rotations and song recs and I realized I'm part of the problem because I just quietly update my streaming library and, if I'm not lazy, my journal.

Some relevant journal pages from August

(Don't mind the 不, I'm still relearning how to rewrite it lmfao)

Into the Woods - Moments in the Woods
But if life were only moments / then you'd never know you had one
Re: the show I just saw - it was the first time I've ever had a hard time purchasing tickets to a local production. I wasn't sure if it was the high-profile cast, the organizer purposefully limiting the tickets and making them difficult to procure, or the increased public interest in musicals... I had no knowledge of Into the Woods before I watched the show I paid for so I'm very glad I ended up loving it in spite of the strange bareness of the stage. 😂

NIKI - La La Lost You
I feel like this song equipped me with questions to ask a friend who'd moved from New York to LA (though my question of "so do you take drunk 2AM strolls in K-Town" has been rightfully ignored 😂)—we'd initially made plans to meet up in Vietnam in September (I've never been, but she goes back there to visit family), but she had to cancel because she suddenly had to move states for a new job. It worked out alright because I'd used up all of my "fun" money on the computer I bought in early 2025 and a series of musical tickets so travel would have sent me spiraling into financial anxiety... though I do feel kinda sad to not have made any vacation plans this year.

Tangentially, the podcast Song Exploder released an episode a couple months ago in which John Rzeznik of Goo Goo Dolls talks about Iris. I've always known it to be the theme song of City of Angels, but I didn't know that City of Angels was actually a remake of a movie that came out a decade before that, so it was a TIL moment! More importantly, he explains where the title of the song came from haha.

G.E.M. - 泡沫 Bubbles (G.E.M. version)
G.E.M. released an album of rerecorded songs in June of this year, which was how I found out that she had been fighting her now-former label. This one is my first and favorite song of hers so the new version has just been on looping in my playlists.

Laufey - Silver Lining
This song has actually been in my Justice in the Dark playlist since it came out earlier this year (for the lyrics "I've been falling into bad habits / "staring into the abyss / drowning in red wine and sniffing cinnamon" and "when you go to hell, I'll go there with you"), but I've been listening to it a lot more lately.

Zhang Xincheng - 喜劇 Comedy
I found it amusing that ZXC and Laufey's (mini-)albums came out on the same weekend... Girlfailure album meets boyfailure album... "I'm just a jester" meets "就當作是喜劇".

Ethel Cain - Nettles
Listened to this today when the weather and my state of mind were gloomy and gray and it hit SO GOOD. "To love me is to suffer me"—yeah, tell them!

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May journal + media log

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 13:47:20 GMT

Words are from a poem by Li-Young Lee and Bird of the Summer by A Fine Frenzy.

I have not seen any egrets—which used to hang around our area in the recent years—since the 7th of May, but I've had sightings of other birds after that. These days I'm back to only seeing sparrows, though sometimes I hear orioles flying overhead in the morning.

More journal photos

The fire was just down the street. It turned out only to be a first-alarm fire and was put out pretty quickly, but I was too alarmed to take a video. /o\

Went through a minor crisis because these Japanese jam and butter packets gave me SO much joy but are so wasteful:

Vocabulary from Justice in the Dark:

Movies

The Rose of Versailles (2025)
Most of the story was compressed into music video form so it felt kind of like a musical? It's a very vibes-y adaptation with unapologetic anachronisms, but ultimately lacked closure between the two lead characters. It's a fun movie to watch with a friend, though, especially when none of you are familiar with the original canon. There's so much to comment on! (Me: "Oooh is he regaining his eyesight?" / Daisy: "Oooh is he losing sight in his other eye?")

The Match (2025)
Netflix markets this as a psychological thriller that highlights the main character's breakdown, but it's actually a character study about two inter-generational baduk players (the peerless mentor and his prodigious student) who push and pull each other and breathe new life into the sport. (Found out afterwards that this movie was based on real players.) Really enjoyed this one!

Detective Chinatown 1900 (2025)
I... How do I put it? If my paternal elders' chain letters were turned into a movie, this is what comes out—buddy-cop dynamics, broad humor, Chow Yun-fat's long dramatic spiels about Sinophobia, and racist caricatures of Native American culture (that these characters are portrayed as good people is immaterial).

Zhang Xincheng (playing a supporting character) was very attractive when he swore in English. IIRC he even won an award for his performance in this movie, which is painful to me because while I like that he did this movie because it broadens his network, I absolutely do not want people to associate him with this. 😂

Webtoons

The Wicked Ladies-in-Waiting (S1)
Het romantasy that puts emphasis on gen + found family relationships. Although it begins with a standard romance setup (the FL and ML's first meeting), the two leads part almost immediately so the FL can pursue her revenge and nudge the second prince to bid for the throne.

A quote from the scene where the second prince cross-dresses and earnestly draws inspiration from his ladies-in-waiting: Examples of true women I know, and not mere images people made up... It's Coco, who is confident and charming like a flickering flame, and Julia, who is tranquil yet formidable like the waves. Julia and Coco are like teachers, friends, and sisters to me, and I have been closer to them than anybody else.

The Tale of Goldiluck the Black Kitten
Life has simply not been the same since I finished this. I spent months unlocking 2-3 chapters a day, a most soothing routine, and when I finally got to the end life felt so empty. ;__; This is a gen + found family manhwa that ended with a trope that's usually associated with romance. Ahhhh I love them so much! And the manhwa loves cats so much, I cried so hard over each and every one of them (except maybe Goldiluck's derpy bio-dad lol).

The artist's current project is a Shape of the Water-esque BL manhwa where one of the characters is an orca that can take human form, which is... very on-brand for them.

Misc.

Sa Ye audio drama eps 1–2
Listened to the first two eps of the censored cut; I am unclear if anything was cut in these two eps and hated the feeling so much I couldn’t go on. The AD seems to start you off at a different point from the novel. Rather than guiding you through the leads' first meeting, it drops you straight in the classroom, at which point they've already met and I have no idea how many characters I'm listening to because they're all delinquent-type boys.

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April journal + media log + fanworks roundup

Thu, 22 May 2025 11:35:29 GMT

journal photos: food, jitd vocabulary

The vocab notes have been paying off as I go further in the show. \o/ But I've been too busy just trying to catch up with the episodes to keep at it. ^^;

Media

啞舍 Ya She: Modern-day supernatural donghua about an antique shop owner and a doctor whose fate is tied with his. Not really a fan of the way women were written here—to its credit there were a lot of female characters, but they lacked agency and I was especially annoyed with the subplot with the doctor's patient. Cases were pretty hit-or-miss; my favorite was the Tong Puppet episode. Overall, this was better as a buddy watch than a solo watch, especially with daisydiversions "translating" the dog over voice call. :P

Cheese in the Trap: Modern-day college enemies-to-lovers manhwa where the ML has done a host of truly unforgivable things to the FL, due to a lack of empathy, lack of interest in considering the ripple effects of his machinations, and his own disdain for the FL. He kind of spends the present timeline trying to make up for it, knowing he can't, and fearing he'd lose the FL now that she's entered his orbit and become his world. That the romance is on the unhealthy side makes it more interesting, as does its depiction of socio-economic differences (ML VS everyone else). But the personal conflicts are dragged out—this comic has a brand of wish fulfillment that has all the college drama hashed out over a series of public classroom showdowns and having the crowd pick a "side". IDK why these college students are so invested in each other's lives, to the point of getting involved in the drama?

The best parts were the family storyline—the FL struggles with the pressure of being the eldest daughter; when she changes and asserts her feelings, her family changes with her. I loved watching Inho being folded into that bubble. And I really liked that one of the story arcs was about a gay couple going through the roughest patch of their relationship because of financial stress.

xxxHolic movie:: Wrote about it here.

Fanworks roundup

Fanvid: "Wonderland" (xxxHolic | gen)

Fanvid: "Untouchable Face" (Justice in the Dark | Luo Weizhao x Pei Su)

Fanvid: "the unblooming flowers, the unreturning you" (Justice in the Dark | gen - character study about Pei Su and his grief for his mother)

Fanvid: "The Brightest Star in the Night Sky" (Hikaru no Go/Qihun | gen - everyone x Go)

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Photo dump: Jan-Mar 2025 journal

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 12:18:17 GMT

A bunch of badly taken photos (I really should learn how to take better ones!) of my journal from the first quarter of the year. I'm using an A5 Laconic planner with a little snake on the cover. :>

January

For some reason I slapped these on a paper background, idk???

February

March

I was so deep in my manhwa brainrot I didn't have the space to write about them and was already planning to get a Hobonichi for 2026 haha! It's evening out though because April has been a very empty month. I've temporarily moved back to my Field Notes to make my little lists (especially since I just had a bunch of little fandom projects spinning around in my brain and it was kind of driving me crazy) because I'd otherwise just be stuck in my head and bedrotting. I also just got a set of carbon ink refills for my Platinum Preppy, which was how I found out that the reason my writing was so thin and more prone to skipping was because I had been running out of ink this whole time? 😂

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Incidental learning

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 04:53:45 GMT

priest - 默讀 Silent Reading ch 181-183 (roadtrip extras):

Zhang Xincheng - 安慰獎 Consolation Prize:

光·渊 Justice in the Dark eps 9 and 10:

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Recently:

I've been nursing a minor caustic soda burn on the tip of my right thumb that I got from trying to unclog a drain... It doesn't affect my daily life very much but there's some discoloration underneath the nail, a lesson to have the sense of self-preservation to rinse unwanted substances off immediately. ^^;

Spent Sunday night retrieving my Evernote notebooks through a one-week trial because we were recently talking about xxxHolic and I missed the fic and then I found out that Evernote has been paywalled since I last logged in (2020)... Not sure where to back up these downloaded files haha my hard drive backups are so fractured now.

Summer is truly here. Every day I can feel myself being baked inside these concrete walls. Even wearing my lightest summer clothes hasn't helped at all, the air is so hot, and it's going to get worse for a while. :(

Have been opting to focus on mobility and gentle movement for my ~exercise~ this week so I've gone back to Yoga with Shaunneka's seated flows! She saved me from my back pain and the tantrums I would have pitched because I was hot and tired and cranky lol.

Random internet finds: lalage's Look Back fancomic ; atmo_draws's Flik and Viktor costume art; the FFXIV Journal tag on Bluesky (I've never played FFXIV but I've been enjoying mss3ng's FFXIV journal spreads and I think it's very cool that there's a dedicated tag for it!!!)

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snowflake challenge 6, language journaling, resources

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 07:13:55 GMT

1.
snowflake_challenge #6: Share your favourite piece of original canon.
I don't have a favorite anything anymore since I have a very short memory and tend to move on from interests... But here's a list of favorites from the last five years:

the movie Legend of Hei: there's supposed to be a sequel in the works and I'm worried Xiao Hei will spend less time in his cat form in it. I think his human form is cute too but I have cat bias. XD

the manga Witch Hat Atelier: the art, design, and paneling are insanely good, and I cried almost every volume. Not very sure the anime format is for me but I'm excited for it nonetheless!

the baihe youth comic 她們的故事 Their Story: Found out recently that there's some controversy(?) around it, but I still love it and it continues to be a comfort reread.

the Yoruneko comics, which are about the daily (well, nightly) life of a cat owner: this is also a comfort read and the main reason I still check Twitter, as the artist posts there. There's an animated series too.

the webtoon Like Wind on a Dry Branch: I paused at around 100 chapters in (it's ongoing with 200+ chapters), but it was the most invested I was in a canon in a while, a rare occurrence. It has some of my fav tropes too, ie. hurt/comfort and demons raising a human child :'D

I guess it's easier to say that my favorite medium is comics these days... I need to relearn how to read books without illustrations. ^^;

2.
Vocabulary list from the first chapter of 全宇宙最后一只猫 The Last Cat in the Universe (which I'm dropping because I'm looking for shorter or maybe less webnovel-y reads):

3.
Recent bookmarks:

Public Domain Archive: you can filter by style, time period, and tag!

Ellipsus: supposedly a Google Docs alternative.

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like butter on toast

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 07:30:09 GMT

Songs: 一蓑煙雨 by Zhang Xincheng & Waltz About Death by Angela Autumn

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My computer is broken again so it's gonna be another exciting weekend of troubleshooting attempts. I'm not optimistic that reinstalling my OS or restoring from backup will help. :( The silver lining is that I finally managed to send off a long-overdue family photobook for printing a few days ago, and I laid everything out on Canva, so the draft file is on the internet and nothing of value will be lost if I have to restore my computer from the last backup point. (I'm still worried that it will turn out so ugly it's ungiftable but at least it's theoretically reworkable in the future!)

In other news, the new Link Click donghua OP just dropped:

And this is what the band has to say in response to the mass wailing:

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Journaling: 桥头楼上 (priest) - reading notes, vocabulary log for chapters 14+

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 14:09:32 GMT

Reading log + discussions:

Chapters 25–26 (dayadhvam_triad shared a link to the timeline of novel events) (major spoilers)

Chapters 27–28

Chapters 29-32 (dayadhvam_triad shared a 50-minute Bilibili review)

Vocabulary log (compiled on Tumblr)

No brain left to talk about any of it, but I finally managed to cross things off my reading list:

桥头楼上 End of the Bridge, Top of the Tower by priest (fiction, mystery/thriller, ~120k words)

Halo-Halo Manila by Jimmeh Aitch (nonfiction comic, 80 pages)

陰間沒有珍奶嗎？ Is There Boba in the Underworld? by 接骨木花 (fiction, m/m romance with supernatural elements, 10k words)

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Journaling: 我蔫去的愛佮你恬去的心

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 09:36:54 GMT

Recent fixations:

(Click for full view)

Image 1:
萬千花蕊慈母悲哀 by Collage, a song I've been obsessed with since August... I know it looks like I miswrote 人 as 入 but I swear I didn't!!! I just messed up the warped effect lol.

Image 2:
Fallen London (The name of my Salt Weasel is Radish btw)
Note:"The Reader" tarot sticker is from Scout Craft on Shopee... I originally wanted to stick it on my Kindle case but it didn't really fit with my other Kindle stickers... The rest of the stickers are miscellaneous freebies from small local stationery sellers.

My worst journaling habit is that I always start small on the upper left corner, which messes up the composition when I want to build up the page aksj;ajdfapa;.

ETA: Fail Better Games admin has reposted but they were kind enough to ask for permission first...

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Priest, "橋頭樓上" chapters 1-13: reading + vocabulary log

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 13:05:35 GMT

Originally meant to read two chapters / week, something I managed to do with the two other cnovels I finished this year, but my ability to focus on anything has been in shambles. I'm lucky if I even finish a chapter a week. /o\

Reading log:

Chapter 13

Vocabulary log

Chapters 1 - 7:

Miao Miao chapter and onwards:

Anxiety / attention / dysfunction things

I'm trying to get back into journaling for the 398740340th time so my brain can calm down, but once again I'm lucky if I even manage to take down my (work) notes and to-do-list... for the past week, I've been going rogue and starting new unrelated and unimportant tasks that I've been procrastinating from for years... and once I stop, I never continue any of them either. So now my workspace is just a map of my distractions. Here are the papers I was shredding before I got up to answer a call, there are the pile of files I was sorting.... Here are the objects I meant to move to a more logical place when I was cleaning out a drawer, there is the folder I moved so I could have a smoother workflow to finish that 10-minute task. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Meanwhile I'm barely keeping up with the more "important" aspects of my work... I can project the illusion of working hard and getting big stuff done, but there's so much that has fallen under the cracks and that I've shoved away from view, in the hopes that future!me will feel like picking them up. 😂

Similarly, I spend all my free time trying to read/watch ten minutes of something new and inevitably I give up and get stuck in a loop of trying to figure out how to optimize my "fun" time. I've been having sleep issues again too, so I think... my anxiety has come back to take over my life. XD I spent most of July avoiding all thought and sleeping as much as I can, and maybe that helped a bit, because my insomnia and intense midnight hunger pangs haven't been as bad as they were in the first half of the year... But I'd really like to be able to just relax like a normal person haha.

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She Belongs to Me chapter 5-6 notes

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 04:39:42 GMT

Chapter 5: mostly uneventful but at least the cover art is beginning to make sense

Chapter 6: Mid-autumn + stormy night hurt/comfort chapter... Jiang Ci really needs to get one of those cat body pillows... A little Xiao Hei nightlight... Or one of those color-changing cat lamps... (Basically everything I can't justify getting for myself because of space + practicality issues lol) (I have a perfectly respectable bolster pillow that I do really like even though it's not cat-shaped)

Somewhat related: tanjiu9's most recent art (4-page comic):

Enjoy a blissful lie-in on weekend morning~ pic.twitter.com/zAv6Zp8xnH
— 坛九 (@tanjiu9) March 9, 2024

They also recently posted Marcille / Falin fanart (2 images)!!!!!

#ダンジョン飯 Growth pic.twitter.com/khEZ8aav0F
— 坛九 (@tanjiu9) March 5, 2024

Lastly, I Ship My Rival X Me manhua, a.k.a. my comfort manhua, has been licensed physically in English and is scheduled to come out in November 2024. The existing translation was readable from what I've read of it, and I expect it's the same team, so... good news to everyone who wasn't able to read everything before they pulled the plug on Bilibili International.

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She Belongs to Me reading / vocabulary log: chapters 1–4

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 14:07:39 GMT

(I can't write 屬 aksdja;kfa)

(I also keep meaning to post my vocabulary journaling for Little Mushroom and My Five Elements Lack You from 2023 but _(:3」∠)_)

Trying to retain more longer phrases / idiomatic expressions... let's see how long I keep at it haha.

Reading notes: chapter 3

SBTM ch3

- omg what is happening 😂 the students gushing over JC’s sensitivity to pitch/tonality… the power & precision of her wrists that they can only dream of (maybe in filthy ways)…

- i need JC’s piano tuning adventures to get the sports animanga treatment
. . 可是你看她，有史以来破格提拔的最年轻的首席，简历上说她才25岁！”

“嗳，她对音准的敏感度，和手腕力量的精准度都是我们望尘莫及的。”

“……你真的没在开黄腔？”

“什么黄腔？我是这样的人吗？”

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2023 Year in Review + Journal Pages

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 15:11:35 GMT

Technically this should be a "top 2" because only Fallen Angels and Leonor Will Never Die made me feel connected from start to finish (Spider-Man: AtSV was also a 4.5/5 movie for me, but took a while to reel me in).
( 2023 movies, books, TV )

Tools used:

Letterboxd Wrapped (3rd party year-in-review generator)

Lastboxd (3rd party collage generator)

StoryGraph Wrapped

Last.FM Playback

( 2023 in journal pages )

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Journal 240128

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 11:59:49 GMT

I want to make a journaling journal but I can't quite figure out which platform / approach is best for it. ;__; It probably should be Tumblr, but I haven't been in a Tumblr mood recently. Still have some spreads from (or for) 2023 that I've been too lazy to post here...

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New Things November

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 14:12:30 GMT

1) I upgraded from one secondhand phone (iPhone 8, 64GB) to another (iPhone 11 Pro Max, 256GB), and it's been a surprisingly tedious process! Migration took a couple of tries. I was told the battery was still fine but I decided to replace the battery anyway since diagnostics marked it as significantly degraded, and I think it was a reasonable decision???

I also spent some time trying to find a new budget app since the app that I was using to log my expenses has been defunct for years. Ended up with an app that's quite simply called Budget. It's not a super seamless experience but it's close enough to what I need (logging and categorizing).

2) After a solid month of indecision, I got a new planner, one that conveniently starts in December. After going with dateless planners during the pandemic, I'm back to the regular dated life. I went with a Laconic (A5, vertical left), which has an hourly layout on the left and a free grid layout on the right. So far it hasn't fulfilled the fantasy of solving my productivity/laziness issues, but it's nice to be able to block out time visually. Again, not the perfect experience (the allotted daily sections are too small for writing notes, which I like on my dated spaces), but overall it has a lot of nice features.

Months have built-in tabs and every page has a mini-calendar for the quarter. Monthly spreads have ample space for writing on and/or decorating if I ever feel like it. It is, however, 3x pricier than my previous go-to planners (Midori and Muji), so we'll see how much I use it in 2024.

3) I have no photos of it, but I got a new case for my Kindle! My previous one was one of those very cheap China ones (literally shipped from China lol) and the print for the design was SO bad but not worth exchanging. I put up with it for more than a year but I couldn't take it anymore, so I got a no-nonsense clear one this time (though frosted at the back), one I can decorate with cute stickers. ♥ I actually got curious compliments when I took it to a screen protector stall hehe

4) Lastly: got a new personal Instagram account even though I'm not particularly active, because my original one was created for our dog that died a year ago. Not sure if making a new account was a good idea—in some ways it feels like self-erasure because I did have some travel photodumps on my old account, from a much different time that I'll never get back. But I managed to download the data/archive of my original IG, which feels reassuring because a lot of the photos/videos were taken 3 (or 4?) secondhand phones ago.

Reading recently:

Xi Zixu, My Five Elements Lack You: I'm not sure if I'll finish this this year because my ability to read disintegrated again, but I'm at chapter 80+! It's a wildly uneven book and the main romance sucks tbh (though the chapter 81 confession was hilarious) but I'm really fond of Lin Jue, the thirty-something jiejie who has truly weird and scary hobbies and was recently revealed to be grieving a long-term relationship.

Witch Hat Atelier, which I'm buying veeeeery slowly and I'm very grateful for because reading it makes me feel alive and present.

Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, This is How You Lose a Time War: finally picked this up for its 2023 virality, but the writing style and alternate history parts might not be for me, sadly. I'm invested in the main characters' relationship, though.

My Shortbox Comics 2023 haul......... I'm not even sure I'm 1/3 in. XD

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journal WIPs~

Sat, 12 Aug 2023 17:25:39 GMT

I really wanted to unwind and recalibrate my mind, and thankfully there was a Calvin Klein event that Zhang Xincheng (among others) participated in. It was mostly just him promoting the product, interacting with fans, and playing unremarkable games onstage and streaming on Taobao, so I just put that on the background and did a little journaling hehe. It was nice! There were musical acts before he showed up, so it kind of felt like going to a friend's gig, hanging around the venue and doing other things while waiting for their set to start. :')

(Images hotlinked from Twitter.)

I don't actually know how to watercolor, I just followed this watercolor aurora tutorial on Youtube haha—didn't quite succeed, but it works for what I ended up using it for. :D

PS. The Niangzi Is Rio mug was a gift from umichii, and too large/heavy to drink from (unless soup), so it's a watercolor mug now hahaha.

I (FINALLY!!!) finished Little Mushroom novel, so I'm free from reading obligations for a while; I had some other books I was in the middle of (a Ted Chiang anthology + A Gentleman in Moscow) but I kind of lost my ability to read, oops. I found out that some manga IS actually compatible with my Kindle, and while I can't actually afford to buy several volumes in one go (which will only be a problem till I catch up on a canon), I'm still really excited to be able to read and properly look at the art in e-ink, especially since majority of my hobbies involve a heavy amount of screen time. I got the first volume of Witch Hat Atelier, and it was worth every penny. The art is beautiful and it spends a lot of time on the sigils, which is fun! The downside is that there's no Table of Contents to help you navigate through the chapters, and I can't add notes either (just unnamed bookmarks), but it's a small tradeoff to get the same visual experience (and lack of eyestrain) of a physical manga without having to own it physically.

+ Movies that are on my to-watch list (so I don't forget):

Marry My Dead Body: Taiwanese supernatural, LGBT-adjacent comedy that just came out. Might pitch this as a groupwatch (since we're on a Taiwanese media streak), but I'm still a bit tentative, haha. This one has Greg Hsu as a cop character who's forced to help a gay ghost with his unfinished business so he can reincarnate.

Before, Now, and Then: historical Indonesian movie set in 1940 and 1965, and seems to be about women. Highly recommended by dramateaque, who loves Kamila Andini's direction and has given me most of the information and warnings (...or non-warning haha; I was afraid it'd be violent) I need to hopefully proceed with watching this someday. It's kind of artsy and beautifully filmed, from the screencaps that I've seen.

Polite Society: an aartichapati rec; looks like a fun family-centric (sisters!) and high-energy comedy about a British-Pakistani teenager who does martial arts and aspires to be a stunt double.

Filipino movies that have been on my watchlist for a while: Ang Larawan (movie-musical, historical, based on a play I haven't read lmfao) and Saving Sally (romcom, animation)

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小蘑菇 Little Mushroom vol 1

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 09:48:15 GMT

But first, my vocabulary list/journal doodles~

小蘑菇 Little Mushroom is a post-apocalyptic novel about a future where gene contamination has caused inter-species mutation all over the world. And the more that humans try to keep their biological humanity intact and survive as a species, the less human they become.

I didn't expect this book to be as bleak as it was but in retrospect it's pretty thematic. It pursues the question of "how far are humans willing to go?" wholly and unflinchingly, and it allows you to inhabit an interesting emotional space as the events unfold before the eyes of a mushroom who has absorbed human genes but doesn't experience emotions or attachment the way that humans (and by extension, the novel readers) do. There is some comedy and humor in between all the horror, so it's not horrifying the whole way but it was still terrible, lol.

The visual aspects of the story are beautifully, vividly rendered, but the worldbuilding is pretty shaky so it was hard for me to predict which details would be plot-relevant or not because there were some aspects that seemed like they could be a cause for concern. I did get a better handle on the storytelling style and its themes in the second half (Roses), which had a longer series of intertwined mysteries and plot points that I was very invested in. I liked having the information spread out and revealed ~organically~, but I'm not sure I enjoyed having all the information slowly trickling in only for later chapters to change the rules.(But it's entirely possible that my perspective of time is skewed from only reading 3 chapters at a time...) The high points for me definitely were the action-horror chapters that An Zhe was a part of! They were horrifying, but wonderfully executed.

Vol2 ends at a really good place where it's not a sudden cliffhanger but still leaves you with all the unanswered questions that An Zhe wasn't invested in finding out.

The English translation does really well with scenery and visual details, because it really felt like I was being drawn to the picture that was in the translator's head, and I genuinely enjoyed the first few chapters. But the longer I was reading the more it felt like an initial pass that was meant to be revisited, with lots of the choices in the later portions feeling rough and cursory. It is readable but not the smoothest experience—I felt this most in the dialogue parts, because they were the parts that I found easiest to read in Chinese, but reading them in English didn't feel as easy?

CONTENT WARNINGS: body horror, gore, giant bugs and worms (horrifying), attempted rape, racism/weird depiction of racism at the beginning (not in the English translation)

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halfcactus

Journal flip-through + trying to start a(n old-school) blog

I have wanted clarity in light of my lack of light.

Hobonichi Cousin A5 week 1 + preliminary thoughts

2025 birds in review

November journal

October journal

Photodump: June journal

@thefridayfive 2025.10.10

August / September music

May journal + media log

Movies

Webtoons

Misc.

April journal + media log + fanworks roundup

Media

Fanworks roundup

Photo dump: Jan-Mar 2025 journal

Incidental learning

snowflake challenge 6, language journaling, resources

like butter on toast

Journaling: 桥头楼上 (priest) - reading notes, vocabulary log for chapters 14+

Journaling: 我蔫去的愛 佮你恬去的心

Priest, "橋頭樓上" chapters 1-13: reading + vocabulary log

She Belongs to Me chapter 5-6 notes

She Belongs to Me reading / vocabulary log: chapters 1–4

2023 Year in Review + Journal Pages

Journal 240128

New Things November

Reading recently:

journal WIPs~

小蘑菇 Little Mushroom vol 1

Journaling: 我蔫去的愛佮你恬去的心